Traumafessions :: Reader Alicia on Giant Nose-Face Ad

I must admit, the thing that traumatized me most as a child was not in fact a scary movie at all, but a television commercial that would never be considered scary now. You must look at this from the eyes of a sensitive five-year-old child. The commercial was for a nasal-spray type of decongestant. I do not remember the brand, as I never watched the commercial for that long.

Anyway, the congested person featured on the commercial had a giant nose in place of a head. (I found out years later that once they used said decongestant, they had a regular head again.) I have no idea why this scarred my fragile psyche so much at the time, but every time the commercial came on, I ran from our family room screaming “IT’S THE BIG NOSE!”

I was frightened by this commercial for years. Even now, 14 years later, the thought of someone with an abnormally large nose in place of a head scares me. This is a humiliating traumafession, but I had to get it off of my chest somehow.

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4 responses so far ↓

Is that ad really 14 years old? Wow. I remember it so well, and yeah, it’s weird.

I remember the ad with Brian Dennehy where he’s walking down the street looking in people’s windows and talking about Zantac. I was SO worried that he’d totally break into someone’s house and kill them if they didn’t have their Zantac on display!

There’s a new ad on TV right now with several women holding their decapitated head, which is supposed to be symbolic for their headache woes, but I just think it’s creepy!

I remember not long ago my sister read an article about how a persons EARS and NOSE never stop growing (“That explains why old people look so weird” she added). My sister and I have always hated our noses and rallyed to get our rich papa to get us nosejobs to no avail. We’re not giving Ringo Starr a run for his money or anything, but, yeah, our noses are not cute, small or button-like.

Well, anway, the other day I told my husband that thing about how peoples ears and noses never stop growing and in all seriousness he turned around with a horrified look on his face, pointed at my nose and said “You mean that things gonna get even BIGGER?”

So yeah, to hear him tell it by the time I’m 50 I should be looking like that guy in the nasal spray commerical.